


All Torn Down

by tawg



Series: Hail Hydra [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AO3 Fundraiser Auction, Abduction, Bloodplay, Consent Issues, Drugging, Dubious Consent, Knifeplay, M/M, Mutilation, Scars, Stockholm Syndrome, Submissiveness, hail HYDRA, knives - scalpels, mention of needles, stockholm syndrome-y domesticity, this is not a happy fic, warning for a lack of aftercare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 05:09:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1292548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Does it still count as Stockholm Syndrome if you like the guy <i>before</i> he kidnaps you?</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Torn Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JadeGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadeGirl/gifts).



> JadeGirl won me in last year's AO3 Fundraising Auction, and requested that I write Coulson finally getting some alone time with Clint, of the variety hinted at in chapter eight of Hail Hydra (the line where Coulson muses over taking Clint apart and putting him back together). This story picks up after [chapter nineteen](http://archiveofourown.org/works/472785/chapters/1259656) of Hail Hydra. 
> 
> I have to give a huge thanks to the team of people who beta'd this fic for me. [Selori](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Selori) handled the spelling and grammar (and there is still plenty of bad grammar in this fic, but that's usually a stylistic choice on my part. If you spot something that looks like a mistake, please let me know?), [Kaguya_Yoru](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kaguya_yoru/pseuds/kaguya_yoru) looked over the medical/practical side of the activities in this fic and gave me a lot of useful feedback, and then [Sinope](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sinope) looked over the nearly-finished fic and gave me some valuable feedback about the ordering of scenes. These people have made me look good, and I encourage you all to check their stuff out if you haven't already.

Clint’s head hurt and his mouth felt achingly dry as consciousness slowly returned to him. His left knee and hip held pain deep in the joints. His fingertips were numb. One forearm had been grazed hard along the ulna. There was something cold and wet against his neck. The one blessing was that he was in a dim room lit by a faint blue glow. He felt safe and warm in the darkness.

“Ah, you’re awake,” a familiar voice said. “Hold still, please.” And then a bright light was shone into Clint’s eyes, making him groan sharply and try to pull away. “Baby,” Coulson scolded gently.

Clint moved his tongue around his mouth. It felt thick and heavy in the dry landscape. “Concussion?” he rasped.

“Not this time,” Coulson replied. “Water?”

“Mm,” Clint grunted in the affirmative. Coulson pulled Clint’s mouth open with a thumb on Clint’s chin, dumped a cube of ice in Clint’s mouth, and then left him to sort it out. Clint heard Coulson turning away, could make out the hum of a computer in the room, possibly the single light source. He clenched his hands repeatedly into fists until most of the feeling had come back to his fingers, and then eased himself into a sitting position, an icepack falling away from the side of his neck in the process. There was an IV going into his arm, but Clint was feeling the after-effects of a drugging rather than the present-tense, so he made the generous assumption that Coulson was rehydrating him.

He had been laid out on a couch that sagged in the middle, and Coulson was sitting on the floor with his back against the front of the couch. Coulson was indeed working at a computer, a small netbook balanced on his lap, frowning at it. They were in a room with narrow windows at the top of each wall that had been covered over with black plastic. Probably a basement. Clint wasn’t in his tactical uniform; instead he was in a grey t-shirt and cotton sleep pants with blue and white stripes down the leg, which suggested that he hadn’t been incapacitated for a long period of time – Coulson didn’t seem like someone who would appreciate changing soiled clothing, and probably would have stuck Clint in a hospital gown if that had been the case. Coulson was wearing a polo shirt and black pants, and for a moment Clint wondered if he had gone back in time, if he were in some Hydra base long before things had gone completely to hell.

Coulson glanced over at Clint, and Clint saw the deep, dark black of an eye patch marking out a hole of shadow in Coulson’s face.

“What happened?” he asked around the cube of ice.

“I got off the helicarrier,” Coulson replied, turning back to his laptop.

“Why am I here?”

“You asked to come with me.”

Clint tried to digest that statement, turning it over in his mind. His memories were hazy and he didn’t like that. He remembered stalking Coulson through corridors. The roar of a jetpack and the sickening thud to earth. A rhythmic shaking, possibly a train. Waking up in a dark room. Each moment broken up by a long stretch of ‘scene missing’.

“I asked to come with you?” Clint parroted back.

“Actually, you grabbed my leg and refused to let go.”

“I did not.”

“You threatened to kick and scream all the way up to the flight decks.”

“I didn’t.”

“I still have the pants with your snot smeared along the leg,” Coulson countered mildly, glancing over at Clint again. He didn’t look like someone who was lying, but then Coulson had a gift for telling half-truths. Clint huffed out a sigh and ran a hand through his hair, which was oily but not exactly unclean, and then down to grip the back of his neck. The side of it ached.

“What happened here?” he asked, lightly running his fingers over the sore skin.

“A lot of drugs,” Coulson replied plainly. “I was trying to minimise the bruising, but it’s probably a lost cause.”

Clint prodded one area of his neck experimentally, and the skin ached sharply. “What kind of drugs?”

“Emotional deinhibitors, mild amphetamines, then sedatives. Mainly sedatives.”

Clint twisted around on the couch, resting his bare feet on the cold floor by Coulson’s thigh, and let his head flop forward, his mind wandering as Coulson outlined the various causes of the burn in Clint’s arteries. “So you cracked me open and then shut me down,” he surmised before sniffling loudly, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “Great.”

Coulson looked over at Clint again, and when Clint glanced down at him he saw a darkly amused look on Coulson’s face. “Agent Barton,” Coulson said in a low, level voice, “I haven’t come close to cracking you open yet.”

Clint looked away from Coulson, from the way half of his face was lit by the watery blue glow of a neat little screen. “Where are we?”

~*~

They were in a bungalow, situated in the middle of suburbia. Coulson gave Clint the shortest tour in history, standing at the top of the basement stairs and pointing to the kitchen and laundry, gesturing upstairs for bedrooms and the bathroom, and then heading into the living area with his laptop under one arm.

“Seems nice for a Hydra hole,” Clint commented. There were photographs of landscapes on the walls. They were handsome photos, but Clint recognised some of the sites, the occasional sharp edge of a low building among the trees.

“It’s not Hydra,” Coulson replied from the cream-coloured armchair he was slumped back in.

Clint looked over at him in mild alarm. “What happened to the people who own it?” he asked sharply. “Is there a body in the dryer?”

“It’s mine,” Coulson returned absently, already partly engrossed with his computer once more.

Clint looked around the living room with new eyes, trying to slot the space before him together with what he knew of Coulson. The area was neat and tidy to the point of feeling abandoned. White walls with a beige trim, cream carpet that was unmarred. Clint reflected that it was unlikely that any children had ever lived in the house, as he and Barney had managed to destroy carpets and deface walls without intending to. Then part of his brain clicked to one side and Clint recalled the tight pain and false brightness in Coulson’s voice whenever he talked about his brother. Of course the rooms were free of sticky fingerprints.

If anything, Coulson looked like the one thing that didn’t belong. Even Clint blended in with the colour scheme. The blue on his pants matched the skirting boards in the hall, a dark blue that separated the white walls from the polished floorboards with neat grace. Coulson’s black pants looked like they would stain the surroundings, the bandages at the ends of two of his fingers looked tattered and dirty, and Clint almost expected someone to swoop in from another room and scold him for touching things.

“You live here?”

“Not usually,” Coulson replied.

“Right.”

Clint looked around again, scratched absently at the little bandage at his inner elbow. Coulson had removed the needle for the IV with quick, neat movements. Clint hadn’t even had time to wince. Now, Coulson appeared to be ignoring Clint completely. He was engrossed in clicking at something and then frowning with increasing severity. His face was more angular than when he and Clint had first met; his time with SHIELD had taken its toll. The house had plenty of wide windows but they were all covered by light gauze curtains that let the light in and also filtered out the finer details of their surroundings. There was a door at the end of the hall. Clint could easily open it, peer around outside and get his bearings. It couldn’t be that easy, though. Coulson, who had plans within plans and had managed to outsmart SHIELD more times than anyone felt comfortable admitting, surely wouldn’t be naive enough to allow Clint to see his sanctuary and then just walk away from it.

The smart thing to do would be to play along until Clint had a handle on the situation, until he understood what Coulson’s goal was.

“What are you doing?” he asked as he flopped down on the matching cream couch.

“Checking my e-mail,” Coulson replied with a scowl.

“Bad news?”

“No news.”

“Ah.” Coulson made no sign of moving in the near future, so Clint wriggled and shifted, making himself comfortable on the couch. “Can I watch TV?” he asked.

“Sure.”

~*~

Coulson had fallen asleep sitting on the floor, his back to the couch and a plate still piled with toasted sandwiches next to him. His head tilted back against the seat of the couch and quiet breaths had been long but a little uneven, slightly snuffly around the edges. They had been watching a movie. Or rather, there had been a movie on the television and Coulson had been ignoring it in favour of glaring at his laptop, and Clint had been similarly distracted with keeping track of Coulson, with eating his dinner cautiously and monitoring his body in case something hidden in the food started to kick in.

Clint hadn’t been drugged, and he’d spent forty minutes watching Coulson’s eye occasionally twitch behind the thin skin of its lid, absorbing the colour and texture of Coulson’s eyelashes, the way the lines of his face softened and slackened in sleep. Fury’s eye patch made him seem sinister and dangerous, but Coulson’s neat patch with the white of gauze poking out from underneath had the opposite effect. Coulson had a knack for looking like an ordinary person who had just had a very, very bad day.

The credits had been rolling by the time Clint realised that he could be using the moment to escape. Never one to underestimate Coulson, he decided to check his boundaries. He would take the plate of sandwiches into the kitchen. If he could get that far, he would try the door. If he could get the door open, he would slip into the garden. If his feet touched the grass, he would be away and into the night.

But the sandwiches needed to be covered and put in the fridge first. And then Clint had stood at the kitchen window and looked out into the dark garden, seen the square lights of the boring, ordinary houses that surrounded them. There was no sound from the living room, and Clint had started to worry. Surely Coulson had noticed him moving. Surely Coulson couldn’t be so deeply asleep. Surely Clint should check and make sure that Coulson wasn’t silently preparing to take him out.

Clint padded back to the living room, stood in the doorway and watched as Coulson slept. He’d curled around a little, had his shoulder and cheek pressed against the couch, as though he’d twisted around to follow Clint’s movement without actually waking. He slept with his mouth slightly open, his chin now tucked down against his chest. Clint couldn’t leave until he had a better understanding of what was going on. Wouldn’t be able to return to SHIELD empty-handed anyway. So he padded back to the couch and carefully climbed back on it. Turned the TV off and, to the soft sounds that Coulson made, stretched out to get some sleep.

~*~

Clint had always assumed that life as one of SHIELD’s most wanted would he hard and constrained. He hadn’t considered houses with three bedrooms and groceries delivered to the back door by a nice kid with a skin condition. Coulson eventually explained that it was part of the third-string network. Staff who were good workers but considered unremarkable by various agencies tended to rotate out of evil organisations due to injuries or other life commitments. Because they’d been out of recognisable employment for so long, they tended to shift into perfectly legal support roles. A pair of retired Hydra cafeteria workers took care of the house since Coulson so rarely used it. The groceries were ordered through a business staffed by a family who, in return, needed access to some of Hydra’s more stable serums every few months.

“That... seems like a good system,” Clint admitted.

“SHIELD doesn’t have anything like that?”

“No. I have to go to the store to get my own damn groceries.”

“Oh.” Coulson looked slightly disappointed, as if he had expected better from the good guys.

“So what’s the plan?” Clint asked. They were seated at the small kitchen table, yellow sunlight warming the room. The basement had been filled with old household appliances and Coulson was slowly working his way through them, pulling them apart and harvesting components. Clint suspected that he was working on another blaster, but it was honestly too early to tell.

“Wait,” Coulson replied simply.

“For what?” Clint asked.

Coulson didn’t answer, occupied with the simple circuits in front of him.

“What about me then?” Clint persisted. “How do I fit into all of this?”

Coulson glanced at Clint then, his one-eyed gaze oddly perceptive. “I suppose that depends on you,” he said at last.

Clint snorted and pushed away from the table. He was wearing clothes that Coulson had given him, shoes that had come with the groceries. His sprained knee had been expertly tended to when he had complained about it. They’d had a pile of toasted sandwiches for dinner and then leftover toasted sandwiches for breakfast. There was no reason for Coulson to be looking after him so well unless Clint was going to be of use somehow. Clint was familiar with being utilized, but he hated the uncertainty that Coulson was hanging over him. Hated the thin veneer of polite suburban life that neither of them was especially familiar with. Clint kicked sharply at the leg of the table and Coulson was on his feet in a moment, a screwdriver clasped defensively in his right hand and his left raised in readiness to block an oncoming strike.

Clint wondered how well Coulson would manage in a fight now that he was down an eye. He wondered how Coulson would go without a blaster or injection pen in one hand.

“It’s a new table,” Coulson said at last, an effort to diffuse the tension. Clint, ever the master of maturity, kicked it again, a sharp strike with his heel that shifted the table by half a foot, that had Coulson flexing his grip on the screwdriver.

“Quit fucking around,” Clint said, taking a step towards Coulson just to see the other man edge back. “Whatever it is you plan to do to me, just do it already.”

Coulson didn’t seem willing to respond, so Clint took another step further, intending to back Coulson up against the kitchen counter. Coulson threw the screwdriver at him and, when Clint had an arm raised to deflect it, he kicked out sharply, hitting Clint’s sprained knee. Clint hissed as his leg buckled and Coulson ran at him, shoulder pressed to the centre of Clint’s ribcage. The weight of him knocked the air out of Clint when his back hit the kitchen wall, and Clint scrambled at Coulson, struggling because – despite his frustration and the little twist inside him that desperately wanted to see Coulson backing down and on the defensive – he didn’t want to harm Coulson, was unwilling to strike at his face because so much damage had already been done.

By the time Clint managed to suck in a shaky breath of air, Coulson had Clint firmly pressed against the wall, his forearm against Clint’s throat. Coulson was always faster than people expected him to be, but he was nowhere near peak condition and he wasn’t armed. “And what is it you think I’m planning, Agent Barton?” Coulson asked, glaring at Clint with a single blue eye. “Am I going to leave you in a shallow grave? Use you for parts?”

Strangely enough, Clint had never feared for those things. There was a calm confidence in him that Coulson would be his undoing, but not like that. Never like that. For all that Coulson made Clint’s pulse spike and his neck prickle, Clint wasn’t afraid of something quite so simple.

“You said...” Clint started, his voice sounding small in the still kitchen. “You said you’d put me back together.”

“Is that what you want?” Coulson asked, a dangerous edge to his voice. “Are you really so desperate to be torn apart?”

Clint put a hand on Coulson’s chest and curled his fingers, slowly gripping Coulson’s shirt and refusing to let go. He swallowed thickly, and that was all the answer Coulson needed.

“Go upstairs,” Coulson said quietly. “Main bedroom. Wait for me.” Coulson held Clint in place for a moment longer, their faces close together and Phil staring deep into Clint as if he were some little tissue sample at the end of a microscope. Then Coulson shoved away and left Clint slumped against the wall, his heart thudding and his breath uneven, trying to find the strength to stay upright.

~*~

When Clint stepped into the main bedroom, it was for the first time. He’d identified it through the presence of an en suite bathroom, the queen-sized bed neatly made and then quietly sullied by Coulson’s clothes from the previous day dumped unceremoniously by the foot of the bed. (The tactical clothes they had both worn on the helicarrier were clanging around in the washing machine in the basement. Coulson had asked Clint if he thought they needed the ‘intensive’ cycle or just the ‘stain’ wash. Clint hadn’t known, but he’d suggested the former because he’d wanted to be helpful.)

The room had a queen bed, made up with white sheets and a dark blue comforter. There was built-in storage along the opposite wall that held nothing but some traces of dust and a little bag of stale potpourri. The carpet was soft, and clean, and plush. It felt like a display home. The various AIM labs that Clint had seen seemed to have shown more homey touches than the entire house held. He wondered if Coulson’s chest of drawers held any clothes, if the contents were actually Coulson’s or just necessities ordered by the caretakers to complete the look. He wondered how long it would be before Coulson finished regrouping and pressed on to the next objective. Clint heard the stairs creak as Coulson began his ascent, and snapped to attention. That seemed overly formal, so he shifted his feet and dropped into a rest stance. He wondered if he should be sitting on the bed, if he should have cleaned up or washed his hands —

And then Coulson was in the doorway. He didn’t even look at Clint, just stepped into the room with an air of quiet disinterest around him, as if he hadn’t even noticed Clint standing by the foot of the bed. There was a small red case in his hands, about the size of a book, covered with pleather and held closed with a zip that ran along three sides. “Strip,” Coulson instructed, and Clint tore his gaze from the case. Pulled his shirt over his head and let it drop to the floor beside him. Toed off his shoes and undid the pants he wore accompanied by the sounds of Coulson unzipping the case, of packets being pulled open and small things clicking together. Clint slid his pants and underpants off in one motion. Paused as he considered his socks, then pulled them off too. Clint still had the watch he’d been wearing on the helicarrier, and he unfastened it with a slight wrinkle to his nose. He’d tried cleaning the band earlier in the day, and it was still damp and tacky to touch.

Coulson glanced over at Clint and then stepped into the en suite bathroom, not even entering the small room all the way, the toe of one shoe still touching clean cream carpet as he reached over and into a drawer. “Go shower,” he instructed, handing Clint a bar of soap wrapped in waxy yellow and blue paper. “Use this.”

The bathroom had dark blue tiles covering the floor and stretching up the walls. There were small windows high up on two walls and a skylight let in diffused sunlight. It should be spring outside. Coulson had spent the end of winter in captivity. Clint’s fingers twitched, and he fought down the impulse to rub some warmth into his own skin. The shower cubicle had clear glass sides that made the hair on Clint’s arms prickle from the feeling of being on display. Something about being wet and naked had never sat especially well with him; it felt that much more vulnerable than being naked and dry.

The water heated quickly, and Clint skim read the label of the soap as steam started to fill the bathroom. _Wash thoroughly. Be sure to scrub surgical site._ Nothing complicated, but the words made his stomach drop in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. For a moment it was as though his mind had cleared, a strong voice in his mind telling him to get the hell out of there. He could rush past Coulson, knock him over and all but fly down the stairs and out the front door and then... And then what? Be in the middle of who-knows-where, buck naked and with no phone, no money, no ID. With a pissed off Coulson right behind him. But that wasn’t why he was hesitating. They were on the cusp of something. The edge of a precipice and Clint knew that flinging himself over the edge would never be the smart move but he also couldn’t imagine backing away, losing this moment and all of the moments beyond it and all of those things that it could mean.

There was a line running down his throat and a hook buried deep in him somewhere and, no matter what kind of fight Clint put up, there was an inevitability to Coulson reeling him in, hauling him close and yanking that line out of him and leaving his guts spilling over slippery salty wood.

Clint stepped under the hot spray and started washing himself with careful, methodical motions.

There was a towel hanging on the back of the bathroom door, but there was a stack of white, clean towels folded neatly on a narrow set of shelves between the sink and the far wall. Clint grabbed one of those and ran it over his arms and the back of his neck, rubbed his hair dry and then wrapped the towel around his waist. He turned on the exhaust fan to help clear the steam and then stepped out into the bedroom and pulled the door closed behind him.

Coulson pointed to a patch of floor that had a dark green cloth spread over it, and Clint stepped into place. The sheet crackled underfoot, thin plastic layers hidden beneath it, and Clint’s heart jumped and thumped in his chest. He loosened the towel from around his waist and tossed it onto the pile of soiled clothes in the corner, held his breath as he turned to face Coulson again.

Coulson was in the same clothes he had been wearing since changing the day before, had nitrile gloves in a pale grey that were fitted enough that his knuckles pressed against the rubber in asymmetrical bulges, that stretched up over his wrists and a little way up his forearms. Clint watched those hands as they reached for a shallow dish of dark liquid, as forceps gripped square patches of gauze from a crackly paper packet and soaked them in the dish, turning innocent white to a vibrant orange.

“Arms out,” Coulson said, his voice quiet and calm, and Clint obeyed the instruction. Coulson circled him, slow and intent, his remaining eye drinking in the details of Clint’s form, catching at various details. Clint, usually proud of his body and the layers of muscle wrapped around it, felt uncommonly self-conscious under Coulson’s examination. How did his body look to someone who could pick out the unevenness of his back muscles? The imperfection of his posture and the many little marks and tokens left behind by a life that had been both hard and perhaps not quite challenging enough.

Coulson completed his loop, having circled Clint tightly but carefully not touching him, looking closely along his arms and the backs of his hands. He stopped before Clint once again, looked over Clint’s face with an intensity that seemed to have little to do with Clint being the subject of his gaze. Down under Clint’s jaw, over the lines of his neck and his shoulders. His gaze not lingering on muscle or hair or the nubs of his nipples, but instead catching on the dark spot of a freckle or the long line of a scar. His attention caught on something for a moment, Clint blinked, and when his eyes opened again Coulson had dropped to his knees.

“This one,” he said, reaching out and indicating to the flesh of Clint’s flank with a finger that remained a good two inches away from Clint’s flesh. “How did you get it?”

Clint looked down at the scar. It was maybe an inch long, and fairly wide. Scar tissue stretched easily if the skin around it was twisted and pulled, and Clint had never been good at sitting still. “Arrow,” Clint replied. “It had a barbed head. Needed to be cut out of me.”

Coulson’s eye flicked up to Clint’s face, and he watched it carefully. “Did you remove it yourself?”

“Yeah.” Clint replied, and Coulson dipped the gauze in the betadine once more and then pressed the sodden and dripping wad against the scar, dragging it out and around and colouring the area an unnatural yellow. Clint remembered that wound. Had been left hunched over on his knees behind a van, fumbling in his boot for the little knife he kept there and then huffing, taking deep fast breaths with his free hand pressed near the shaft of the arrow as he had worked up the nerve to get it out. He’d gone to an emergency room to get stitched up. Had vowed to learn how to do it himself because four stitches and a bit of tape had been damned expensive.

Clint stared at Coulson’s shirt as Coulson scrubbed at the area with that sodden, orange patch of gauze, stared at the cheerful and respectable polo shirt and the way it fit his body. A little loose but not obviously so. Clint stared at a wrinkle of fabric and recalled that there was a scar behind it, a similar scar from a similar arrow and his stomach tightened as he remembered the way Coulson had pulled him close, had used the firm planes of Clint’s tactical uniform to manoeuvre the arrow into a more manageable position.

Clint’s breath came out in uneven shudders as Coulson set the dish down on the edge of the bed, as he unclasped the forceps and allowed the used wad of gauze to fall at Clint’s feet. Coulson twisted around and reached over to his little red case, resting open behind him on the bedside table, and picked up a scalpel. The metal handle almost disappeared from view as Coulson adjusted his grip, a thumb pressed along one side and his forefinger pressed along the top of the handle just before the blade. He didn’t have especially long or lean fingers, and his palms were unremarkable in size, but he held the scalpel with quiet confidence, nothing self-conscious or cautious in the way his hand was held easily out and to the side. Coulson looked up at Clint with a steady gaze, and then slowly reached out to press the tips of two fingers firmly against the orange stain on Clint’s skin, maintaining eye contact until the thread between them stretched too taut and snapped, and Coulson’s attention shifted to the scar just below the side of Clint’s ribcage.

“This scar,” Phil prompted, indicating it by miming the length of it from a safe distance. The corner of his mouth pulled up a little, and then he reached up and pressed the scalpel against Clint’s skin.

It sunk in with no resistance, a thin sharp blade doing its job with true efficiency. Clint watched it and felt sweat prickling at the back of his neck, on his brow. Felt his stomach drop in that moment of disconnect between watching the blade divide his skin and the nerves in the area detecting the damage. The blade didn’t go deep. Clint knew deep wounds and he knew what Coulson could do, and the line left in him felt as though it hadn’t even cut through all the layers of skin. But it was calm and precise and the skin of that little patch of Clint’s belly felt cold. There was no blood. Clint stared at the line of scar tissue, waiting for it to burst open, but it was under Coulson’s command now. Coulson looked up at him then, the dark of his eye patch emphasising the kink in his nose, his remaining eye bright and alert. His mouth and forehead were loose and expressionless, but his eye and the associated anatomy belied a keen interest in the way Clint swayed slightly on his feet. When he spoke, his words were clear and careful and deliberate.

“Now it’s mine.”

Clint squeezed his eyes closed and sucked a sharp breath through his nose. He exhaled slowly, let his fingers twitch and then forced them to relax. And then he opened his eyes, and looked down at Coulson, and nodded.

Coulson returned his attention to Clint’s skin, found another scar, and the process repeated. Slicing through a puckered bullet wound in his thigh. Cutting a neat grid over the large patch of scar tissue that had formed over years of skinned knees. His circumcision scar, Coulson holding Clint’s flaccid cock gently with his fingertips, and then dragging the scalpel lightly over that little line. That one bled, just a little. Coulson caught a little of the blood on the side of his thumb, looked at it curiously and then wiped it away by flicking the tip of his forefinger against the stain.

The little scars at Clint’s inner elbows, souvenirs from a mix of fluids going in and fluids taken out, were re-pierced with the very tip of the blade. The flat of it pressed against Clint’s arms and just that sharp little point piercing the skin and then being flicked up and away with controlled movements. The little scab that Coulson had put there the day earlier, when he had been rehydrating Clint after their journey, was given a fond look and then allowed to continue healing.

A thumbprint of a scar on his bicep from a vaccination was carefully traced around. Little indentations that forever marked the bite of a very, very large cat were celebrated with controlled prods. Blood stole along the short, deep claims Coulson drew and slid uneasily over Clint’s skin. Some congealed on their own while others were slow and sluggish but nevertheless steady. Coulson was careful and kind in some places, those near blood vessels or organs. The soft skin of Clint’s stomach was scrubbed firmly but cut more gently than Clint scratched at his own itches, the gloved hands on him conscious of the sensitive little spots that were so easy and effective to damage. But in others there was more pressure behind Coulson’s movements. Never rough or impatient, but his blade would bite all the way through the skin of Clint’s forearm and blood would flow freely for long seconds and Clint would feel overwhelming relief that there was something inside him that could be let out, some small relief to the pressure in his head and chest.

If Clint had been in motion, if he had been forced to run, he would have made even more of a mess of himself as the stretch of his muscle would pull new lips of skin away from one another. But standing in that neat little bedroom, in that quiet house in a perfectly normal suburb, there was barely even enough blood to drip off him. The mess made of the carpet was all Coulson’s doing – the antiseptic he was using dripping and dribbling from saturated cotton buds, the used and discarded balls sometimes tumbling from their little pile and soaking their colour into the carpet. The stains would probably never come out. Coulson didn’t seem to care.

“This one?” he asked. He was standing behind Clint now, using the handle of the scalpel to trace over a scar. Clint couldn’t think of a scar in that location. “Triangular,” Coulson continued. “Smooth, dark scar. No sign of stitches.” Clint wondered if Coulson could tell what caused a scar without being told. Probably. Between his first life as a doctor and the other life that had followed, Coulson probably knew his way around a lot of injuries.

“Burn?” Clint guessed. Coulson hummed, prompting him to continue. “A hot pipe. Some building that had been on fire and I got shoved up against it.” The last word hitched upwards as Coulson claimed that one as his own. It was a sudden, sharp pain as Coulson continued a little beyond the edge of the scar and cut into healthy skin. Scars themselves didn’t seem to bleed, only the softness around them. Perhaps some people became so wrecked that they didn’t bleed at all. Coulson’s breath ghosted over the skin, over the incision and the blood and the burn from years ago, and Clint shivered.

Scar from surgery to pin a broken radius back in place and Clint remembered that one itching like mad underneath the cast he’d worn. Scratches along the swell of the muscle of his forearm because, like the impatient and irritable brat he was, he’d shoved pens down there to try and scratch at it and those scrapes had gotten infected. Coulson tsked at the uneven comet tails of shallow scars. “You should take better care of yourself,” Coulson advised. He wasn’t wrong.

“How are you feeling?” Coulson asked.

“Lightheaded,” Clint replied honestly. “Cold. Nauseous.”

Coulson looked up at him, something in the general vicinity of concern on his face. “No,” Clint continued sharply, even though no query had been put to him, even though his tongue felt thick and lazy. “No, keep going.”

A stretch mark in the soft skin of his upper arm, gained the first time he’d had real access to good food, the first time in his life that he’d felt like he was thriving and Coulson paused at that one too, ran the back of a finger along it and studied the little kinks and twists of the scar carefully for a moment. Clint was holding his arm out for Coulson to inspect, and his muscles were starting to protest, but he did his best to hold still as Coulson carefully cut along the length of it, ending with a twist of prodding cuts, adding a neat little cross to one end. Maybe to mark it as important. Maybe to explore a new form of marking where the skin was soft and willing.

Finally Clint’s face. The scar under his chin where, of all things, a can of dog food had hit him at high velocity. A scar on his cheek caused by a foolish attempt to finish shaving while answering his phone. Clint imparted each cause and case of conflict with distraction. He had never seen Coulson’s face so close before, not with any real opportunity to study it. He had fine skin. Little wrinkles around his eyes, lines at the corners of his mouth. The furrow between his brow was in place as he worked Clint over, but Clint knew that those lines lingered too when Coulson wore easier expressions. He had some freckles by his hairline. Had possibly always had them. Coulson had never been a tanned individual, but he was exceptionally pale after his time away from the world. Perhaps the approaching summer would remedy that.

And there was, of course, the eye. Coulson’s patch was a different badge altogether from Fury’s which was, Clint suspected, tailored to fit his head perfectly. In contrast, Coulson’s had a cheap and flimsy look to it. Most likely picked up from a chemist early in their travels. There was a small square of gauze underneath and Clint wondered if it was simply to keep the patch from rubbing against sensitive skin, or if it had a more practical purpose. Coulson had literally patched himself up on the run. Clint stared at the patch. Was the eyelid underneath it sewn up, or would it be hanging loose as Coulson forced himself to deal with other priorities? Would the cavity have dried out, or be leaking fluid? The whole area was blocked out, but Clint couldn’t see any redness in Coulson face, couldn’t smell an infection. Coulson’s remaining eye was the same stormy grey-blue it had always been, was perhaps a little reddened from strain. But somehow, despite the loss, Coulson still seemed complete. Seemed more real than Clint had ever known him to be, with level breaths that Clint could feel against his chin, with little expressions of concentration that shifted and settled as Coulson’s considerations moved from one thing to another.

It reminded Clint of Paris. Of one night in which neither of them had talked about work, in which they had compared notes and Coulson had watched him with open curiosity and good humour. Things were different now, with Clint captive in suburbia, with him stripped and bleeding and Coulson slowly taking his body over piece by piece. And yet it was still the same. Still twanging air and the strange sense that, somehow, life with Coulson would be normal.

Clint raised his hand slowly, intending to bring it up and cup Coulson’s face. Coulson shifted back and raised his left arm to block, his body twisting and his right arm held close, the flash of stained silver at the end seeming like a natural continuation of his fingertips. He used his forearm to press Clint’s hand away, and suddenly Coulson’s gaze shifted focus. Suddenly he was looking at Clint instead of a collection of parts. And with that shift, some of the busy intent faded away. They stared at one another for a long moment, Coulson’s forearm still against Clint’s hand, the grey gloves dirtied with small marks of red and brown. Covered in Clint, and then Coulson flicked his eyes down over his own handiwork and he seemed completely disconnected from the moment, like a bored patron in a gallery. Clint’s insides curled, and he hated that expression so intently. He swallowed sharply, bit his lower lip and then ran his tongue over it, chasing away the dryness. “I just—” He cut himself off, not knowing how to continue.

Coulson caught Clint’s chin, used his thumb and pinkie to press Clint’s lower lip into a pucker. The latex was sticky and caught on his skin uncomfortably, but the heat from Coulson’s hand still seeped through. Then Coulson raised his scalpel, held it up in front of Clint’s face until he focussed on it, until its presence sank into him. Then Coulson pressed the blade against the centre of Clint’s lower lip, and pulled it sharply away. The blade caught on the skin for a moment before slicing through it. Clint jerked at the feeling, the depth of the cut, the sharpness of the pain. Blood poured down his chin and Coulson watched it for a moment, holding Clint’s face in place, before shifting his hand and pressing his thumb over the cut. He met Clint’s gaze again, his expression forceful. _Mine_ , he seemed to be saying. _This is mine now_.

Clint’s breath came and went in uneven shudders. He felt dizzy and cold. Felt tingles all over and his scope of vision had narrowed, had been honed down and pruned away until it only considered what was directly in front of him. Until it was a small circle and that spotlight of perception was entirely filled by Coulson and his hard expressions and his middle-class polo shirt discoloured with little flecks of blood. Traces of Clint that could be washed away, but Clint would be carrying the marks of their moments together until his body rotted and his flesh collapsed around the many different signatures that decorated him.

Coulson turned and dropped the scalpel on the bedside table, the handle clattering solidly and the blade leaving a small nick in the varnish, a little slice of naked wood showing through the stain and when Clint looked down at his own body it was inverse. Dotted scabs of naked red running over his exterior. The top of his feet covered in cold, congealing blood. Clint wavered, his knees started to buckle, and Coulson’s strong hands were on him. Catching his arms in a firm grip, lowering him to sit on the edge of the bed, pressing Clint’s head down between his knees.

Sitting curled forward and feeling the pain of the different cuts and claims all over him stretching, looking at his own blood on his dick, all he could think was _This is it then. They’ll never take me back now_. It was a sad thought, but only distantly so. Acknowledgement that one path was closed off to him, relief that the eternal conflict was now resolved. Shuddering breaths, his own hands clasped at the back of his neck and small clusters of his blood staining and drying in Coulson’s carpet. The sounds of Coulson stripping off his gloves, tossing them on the pile of dirtied gauze in the middle of the green sheet he had laid out. Pulling on a new pair and snapping them at his wrists. Nudging Clint’s shoulder with his knee. “Up,” spoken in a quiet, gentle voice. When Clint finally pushed himself upright, Coulson had a curved needle in one hand and long dark thread trailing from its end.

Each stitch hurt. The first attempt to put his lip back together was met with a pained grunt and Clint pulling his chin away from Coulson’s grip. But Coulson was firm on the matter. Was careful and focused and measured, and it hurt so much more than the cuts themselves had. Awoke every wound Coulson had cut into him. Clint lost count of the number of suture kits they went through, Coulson switching to a new one when the thread got too short or the needle seemed to blunt. His stitches were neat and even, not so tight as to tug at the skin rather than just hold it together.

“They’ll probably get infected,” Coulson warned him as he swiped antiseptic over a neat row of three stitches, as he waited for it to dry and then stuck a plastic dressing over the top. Cuts that were too small or shallow to deserve being transformed into a seam were nevertheless cleaned out and covered up. Hardly the sterile environment that would be ideal for such activities, but Clint suspected that he would heal up fine. Coulson would look after him.

Coulson finished taping Clint back together, having worked from Clint’s head down to his feet, the minutiae of his movements lost in shadow by Clint’s ankle. The room was darker than when they had started, and the clock on the bedside table told Clint that nearly three hours had passed since he had first entered the room, though he had trouble believing it.

Clint reached out and brushed his fingers against Coulson’s temple, making him startle. Coulson pulled away a little, and Clint’s fingers followed the movement, stroking over the soft fine strands of Coulson’s mousey hair. Coulson looked up at Clint with an unreadable expression on his face, one that shut down even further as Clint stroked a fingertip along the thin black band that held Coulson’s eye patch in place, following the line of it across Coulson’s forehead and blocking his gaze for a moment. “What does it look like?” Clint asked. “Underneath?”

“A mess,” Coulson replied simply. The phone on the bedside table vibrated and Coulson snatched it up, staring eagerly at the screen as Clint shivered at the sudden loss of Coulson’s intense focus. Coulson’s face split into a smile as he read the message he’d received, and Clint stared at the expression. He wondered how long it had been since he had seen Coulson honestly smile. And then Coulson was up, off his knees and pulling off the soiled gloves and dropping them on the floor.

“What’s happening?” Clint asked, straightening up, shifting so his hands rested on his thighs, then sifted them forwards so they were gripping the bedspread either side of his knees.

“The news I was waiting for just came in,” Coulson replied.

“And?”

Coulson looked over at Clint as he pulled a clean shirt from one of his drawers, a happy look of purpose on his face. It was clearly good news. Coulson’s brief hiatus had come to an end, and he would be leaving as soon as he had his shoes on and his laptop packed away.

“What about me?” Clint persisted, and the way his mouth stretched on the last word reopened the cut down his lower lip, leaving him with the base of his thumb pressed to his lip and blood smeared over his chin.

“What about you?” Coulson returned as he pulled his blood-splattered polo up and over his head, holding the clean shirt between his thighs. He threw it past Clint, to the pile of dirty and discarded clothes in one corner, and tugged the clean one on.

“Well what... what happens now?” Clint was naked, and barely held together. He was in Coulson’s house, his _bedroom_.

Coulson gave Clint a mockery of a considering look, his head tilted to one side as he looked Clint over with a slow, lazy leisure, and a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He gave Clint a small shrug, as if that was the best answer he had. Then he slipped his phone into the pocket of his pants, picked the small red case up off the bedside table and zipped it up, dirty scalpel and all, and walked out of the room. 

Clint stared after him for a moment before scrambling to his feet, rushing to get dressed in the small bathroom and fumbling due to his injuries. His arms were stiff because Coulson had bandaged the collection of cuts at his inner elbows with a firm hand, because Clint had incisions at his back and the outsides of his thighs and across his biceps and every one of them pulled painfully as he tugged his pooled pants and underpants on with jerky motions, as he held his t-shirt in his mouth and his shoes under one arm and stumbled down the carpeted stairs, his fingers clumsy as he tried to fasten the front of his pants.

Coulson was standing by the open front door with an impatient look on his face and a black bag over one shoulder, waiting for him. Clint leaned against the base of the banister, sagging a little with relief, as he pulled his shoes on and then tucked the laces down the side against his heel. Coulson was waiting and if Clint stepped through that door with him there would be no more chasing. No more SHIELD and maybe no more AIM and a whole lot of something else.

“So, can I call you Phil now?” Clint asked.

Coulson gave him a dark look. “No.” Then he stepped through the door into the cool afternoon air beyond, and Clint followed eagerly behind.


End file.
